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Topic: Is it better now with few large realms? (Read 1940 times)

So back when I played during like year five and before, there we're a lot more independent realms, atleast I think there we're. But now when I look at the map I mainly see 12 major realms, with half of those being about the size of Ascalon. And I'm just wondering, is the game better now with less realms than it was back then with more? I can't actually tell because I haven't been back for long at all, and I wasn't really that knowledgable of the world back then either, mainly just played in the area of Ryne and played in Grand Fate a very small amount.

I think the large realms now exist for two reasons:1. The lack of players has made major players take as many lands as possible. Following the logic that is better to take land than to leave it rogue/slumbered, and with no one to give it to, the major players act as guardians of land, hoping better times will come when they can hand them around to new players. 2. Small realms with 1-2 players inside become boring real quick. People tend to gang up in bigger places to get the most out of the game.What is better is difficult to say. I was not around when the game was launched and have started the game in early 2015. It has been pretty much the same since then. The game has its periods of ups and downs when activity increases and decreases. The game probably has more cons than pros, but still, the general idea is very appealing and is obviously enough for a minimal group of payers to stick around and keep it running.

Though I also agree with point 2 in the way you worded it. I think small realms with more players might be far more intresting, say a realm with 5 towns and 5 players, each controlling a town, or maybe one controlling 3, 2 controlling 1 each and 2 being knights. And then a place with many such small realms fighting it out. Though at the time with our map it's probably not possible unless someone with a lot of power forces it in a section of the map.

EDIT:This just made me think, wouldn't it help the game quite a bit with getting new players and player retention if it had a second world that was more of a battle royale? Either a permanent one with people just taking some settlements and trying to build them up and attacking eachother, aswell as trying to claim vassals for themselves, really just settlements and people changing hands frequently. Though I think something like this would require some tweaking of stats, probably making settlements far more specialized, so that they produce a lot of what they are good at (either food, wood, metal, goods or wealth) and far less of other stuff. And also building destruction and construction should probably both be sped up a bit. Maybe even lowering of requirements for buildings like royal mews and other such high end buildings.

It could also be temporary like all the shooter battle royale games. With probably far lower construction speeds and requirements for things, and settlements being able to produce things themselves far easier with less trade required. While still far slower than shooter battle royales it would be faster than normal M&F.

Personally i'd like the more permanent one more as it fits M&F better. Though I guess talking about this is kind of pointless for now as development isn't happening anymore or? I just think it might have been a good thing for player retention earlier, even if it might stray a bit from Tom's original goal with the game.

Of course, your point is very much true and is the desirable situation. As far as I know, Erstes Imperium have attempted to limit the number of estates each family/player can control (which is hard to know because we can't see who plays who), and have tried to host as many players as the lands they owned could afford. But the idea doesn't appear to be alive due to bad retention of new players. A critical mass of players needs to be reached for this to happen, but such a point is being bogged down by vast number of estates in the game.

Currently, it is impossible to have this desirable situation where people actually want to fight for their neighbors estates due to the disproportionate ratio of active players and available estates and the fact that the knight game is non existent. It absolutely doesn't pay off being just a landless knight because there is nothing to do.

Of course, your point is very much true and is the desirable situation. As far as I know, Erstes Imperium have attempted to limit the number of estates each family/player can control (which is hard to know because we can't see who plays who), and have tried to host as many players as the lands they owned could afford. But the idea doesn't appear to be alive due to bad retention of new players. A critical mass of players needs to be reached for this to happen, but such a point is being bogged down by vast number of estates in the game.

Currently, it is impossible to have this desirable situation where people actually want to fight for their neighbors estates due to the disproportionate ratio of active players and available estates and the fact that the knight game is non existent. It absolutely doesn't pay off being just a landless knight because there is nothing to do.

Which is exactly why I think a battle royale style second world would probably serve the game well. One that is far smaller than the current one.

A "battle" version suffers from a lot of problems. You need to look at the effort needed to set things up. A low-effort game is more suited to fast battles etc, but ones where you need to more carefully plan and create, those aren't so suited to fast battles, because people see weeks of creation destroyed in a night and then just stop playing.

And rapidly competing to get vassals implies that lots of people are rapidly signing up, which is not a given. A "fast" world might just stagnate faster.

Though I also agree with point 2 in the way you worded it. I think small realms with more players might be far more intresting, say a realm with 5 towns and 5 players, each controlling a town, or maybe one controlling 3, 2 controlling 1 each and 2 being knights. And then a place with many such small realms fighting it out. Though at the time with our map it's probably not possible unless someone with a lot of power forces it in a section of the map.

EDIT:This just made me think, wouldn't it help the game quite a bit with getting new players and player retention if it had a second world that was more of a battle royale? Either a permanent one with people just taking some settlements and trying to build them up and attacking eachother, aswell as trying to claim vassals for themselves, really just settlements and people changing hands frequently. Though I think something like this would require some tweaking of stats, probably making settlements far more specialized, so that they produce a lot of what they are good at (either food, wood, metal, goods or wealth) and far less of other stuff. And also building destruction and construction should probably both be sped up a bit. Maybe even lowering of requirements for buildings like royal mews and other such high end buildings.

It could also be temporary like all the shooter battle royale games. With probably far lower construction speeds and requirements for things, and settlements being able to produce things themselves far easier with less trade required. While still far slower than shooter battle royales it would be faster than normal M&F.

Personally i'd like the more permanent one more as it fits M&F better. Though I guess talking about this is kind of pointless for now as development isn't happening anymore or? I just think it might have been a good thing for player retention earlier, even if it might stray a bit from Tom's original goal with the game.

Hawks has an entire system of Law designed to courage its members to challenge each other for estates, among other things. The only thing the Law has ever been used for though was to oppose the Emperor when he was negotiating a peace deal and consolidate all of our southern Mainland holdings under one nobles command.

Hawks has an entire system of Law designed to courage its members to challenge each other for estates, among other things. The only thing the Law has ever been used for though was to oppose the Emperor when he was negotiating a peace deal and consolidate all of our southern Mainland holdings under one nobles command.

Id be using that to cause chaos if I thought I had even a slight chance of winning or making something fun happen. So basically do anything except just get shot down by everyone else. I might join the Hawks sometime, ive got my max four characters currently though, but 1 of them is in a good position to join Hawks either way and I might get some creds and upgrade soon maybe.

One thing worth considering are the benefits of a shared court. For particularly casual players, it gets incredibly boring to check M&F weekly or whatever to find that there's no new messages in the court. From the people I know, if you're playing inactively most of the time they feel like it's worth playing purely on the grounds that random messages are coming through, even if it is the most backwards part of the most backwards subrealm trying to fend off a single bandit.

Whenever the question is raised on whether something should be a new realm, or part of an existing one we've always come to the conclusion that it's healthier to be part of the larger realm on the grounds that people sending random, realm-wide messages atleast give people something to read.

« Last Edit: April 10, 2017, 10:02:05 AM by Demivar »

Logged

22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Radovid's like you22:34 - Roran Hawkins: but then insane22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Dijkstra is like you

I've always felt that the inactivity part wouldn't be such a problem if there were world-level communications. That negates the inactivity issue, and without that the negatives of all these massive realms heavily outweigh the positives. People come into the game, look at the map, and it LOOKS like people are min-maxing without you even having to know anything about the game.

I've always felt that the inactivity part wouldn't be such a problem if there were world-level communications. That negates the inactivity issue, and without that the negatives of all these massive realms heavily outweigh the positives. People come into the game, look at the map, and it LOOKS like people are min-maxing without you even having to know anything about the game.

I was just thinking about what would happen if one huge empire took over ALL the land, and then people just created subrealms for it, lots and lots of subrealms. With the emperor basically being a throwaway character just sitting there to sit there maybe. Would create an easy way to contact absolutely anyone. I can imagine the adding new contacts to conversation or creating a new conversation might lag because of all the contacts though.

I've always felt that the inactivity part wouldn't be such a problem if there were world-level communications. That negates the inactivity issue, and without that the negatives of all these massive realms heavily outweigh the positives. People come into the game, look at the map, and it LOOKS like people are min-maxing without you even having to know anything about the game.

This is on the cards at least in part. But massive realms shouldn't be a negative, after all in BM all people ever do is bemoan the loss of the days when large realms were truly possible. What I am all for is making the actual player population more visible in M&F, just as it is in BM. Large realms are not a problem, large realms that look like only a few players have any real power, or only a few players are even in, that can be a problem.

With regards to communication, things we are looking at are a newbie channel, some sort of rulers channel. I believe the current message system could be used to have a real-time OOC chat feature, though Tom continually shot down the idea of that. Personally I have been looking at message groups that are tied to realms and positions rather then tied to characters. The idea would be that a realm could set up a message thread with one or more other realms, and each realm has the "diplomat" position assigned to it. That way as diplomats come and go the message thread would be retained and access granted and removed automatically.

This is on the cards at least in part. But massive realms shouldn't be a negative, after all in BM all people ever do is bemoan the loss of the days when large realms were truly possible. What I am all for is making the actual player population more visible in M&F, just as it is in BM. Large realms are not a problem, large realms that look like only a few players have any real power, or only a few players are even in, that can be a problem.

With regards to communication, things we are looking at are a newbie channel, some sort of rulers channel. I believe the current message system could be used to have a real-time OOC chat feature, though Tom continually shot down the idea of that. Personally I have been looking at message groups that are tied to realms and positions rather then tied to characters. The idea would be that a realm could set up a message thread with one or more other realms, and each realm has the "diplomat" position assigned to it. That way as diplomats come and go the message thread would be retained and access granted and removed automatically.

I like the idea of having the ability to tie conversations to realm positions, but the rest? Less so.

First off, I really don't like the idea of a real time OOC chat. Recently we've been in a bit of conflict, and most messages are going through my character. Though I'm checking the game frequently and responding to my own people, I haven't had the time to respond to a lot of other people. (Even with someone that I contacted personally, I haven't had a chance to respond to them in a couple of weeks). I was speaking briefly with one of their leaders who kept responding really quickly, so I eventually said bollocks to it and went to bed. Haven't had time to respond all weekend. There has to be some ambiguity between whether someone is too busy to respond for OOC reasons or whether you're just being ignored ICly. I'm putting inconsequential conversations to the sidelines, and I'd rather not have people moaning about xyz because I have the time to respond to some people, but not all as quickly as they would like.

As for inter-realm diplomats, I'm not entirely sure. It might be nice to not have to send minor characters out to establish contact with foreign realms, but other than that it seems like more of a headache. I suppose the diplomats feature could be used as a way to arrange meetings or whatever, but any usage beyond that might detract from the more enjoyable parts of the game.

A new player chat is a great idea, particularly before the point where any would-be player embraces that people live in timezones outside of their own. Having someone there to help would be very useful.

As for internal usage of title-based conversations, I'd be very hesitant. If at one point, 4 people were speaking on a council and saying some not nice things, anyone who would join that conversation would then gain access to the entire chat's logs. You'd need to find a way to change that, else I for one would rarely ever use it.

« Last Edit: April 10, 2017, 10:51:29 AM by Demivar »

Logged

22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Radovid's like you22:34 - Roran Hawkins: but then insane22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Dijkstra is like you

As for internal usage of title-based conversations, I'd be very hesitant. If at one point, 4 people were speaking on a council and saying some not nice things, anyone who would join that conversation would then gain access to the entire chat's logs. You'd need to find a way to change that, else I for one would rarely ever use it.

What problems do you see happening if there isn't a way to either clear it by choice or make it always clear for new joiners?